o-----------ooO--(- Important Message -)--Ooo------------o | | | SAVE BANDWIDTH & SPACE, DELETE UNWANTED WORDS IN REPLY. | | | o----=[ Penguin @ My - Linux ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) ]=----o keratan drpd url http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-1999-08/lw-08-linmodem_p.html Akhirnya mereka sedar ... --------------8<------------------------------- PC-TEL announces new LinModem The announcement of the industry's first Linux-compatible software modem Summary PC-TEL announces the immediate availability of its new software modem for Linux. Will the mass market bite? How about the Linux community? (1,000 words) By [11]Nora Mikes August 2, 1999 -- PC-TEL, a five-year-old company specializing in software modems for the Microsoft market, announced today that the industry's first Linux-compatible software modem is available to OEMs immediately. Software modems are attractive to OEMs because they drive down overall system cost; however, they also require valuable CPU capacity in order to operate. Even on a powerful 400-MHz processor, a software modem can demand as much as 10 to 15 percent of the CPU's total throughput. This is a high price to pay for hard-core Linux users, like those that make up the consumer base of Penguin Computing, an OEM specializing in high-end Linux computers. Sam Ockman, Penguin Computing's CEO, told LinuxWorld that his customers would accept a software modem if it offered "the throughput as with a traditional modem, and no noticeable degradation of performance from the CPU side." Although a hardware modem can cost up to five times more than a software modem, they are still relatively cheap, with a current price tag at $100 for a high-quality model, he said. "Most of our customers like the idea of traditional modems where the processing is done on the modem -- but it's always good to have other options available," he added. PC-TEL engineers don't disagree with Ockman's assessment that hardware modems aren't likely to disappear anytime soon. "I think that [in the future], a hardware modem will be a high-end, luxury item," said William Hsu, software manager for PC-TEL. But the hard-core Linux user isn't PC-TEL's target market. In fact, the end user isn't PC-TEL's target market at all, as the company sells exclusively to OEMs and PC and data communications equipment manufacturers. According to Steve Manuel, vice president of marketing for PC-TEL, these OEMs are eager to leverage the "free-as-in-beer" quality of the Linux operating system to help drive down costs for mass-market consumer systems. Because "most customers purchase these systems for Internet access, there is a real need for the same sort of ... cost-effective connectivity that has made software modems the fastest growing connectivity solution in the Microsoft Windows market," he said. Ockman sees the value of this approach. "Any options that allow Linux appliances to be more inexpensive to the consumer [are] good, but [the option] needs to be examined to see if it makes sense," he said. "The question is, do people really need Linux-based iToasters that plug into the phone?" Dan Kusnetzky, program director at International Data Corporation, is cautious about the consumer market. "There are a number of vendors trying to make a market in [cheap, Linux-based] systems" for the consumer market, he said. But Kusnetzky offered an alternate scenario, suggesting that large nationwide retailers or other companies requiring thousands of simple boxes that access larger systems might be an attractive potential market for LinModem-enabled machines. Whether in consumer, retail, or other markets, the decision to invest in a LinModem box is likely to be based on advice from opinion leaders in the Linux community. Thus, while hard-core Linux users aren't PC-TEL's target market, the company is very aware of at least some of that community's concerns regarding software-based modems. The development effort behind the world's first LinModem Initial development of the PC-TEL MicroModem was done on Caldera OpenLinux 2.2, on the recommendation of Elite Group Computer Systems of Fremont, CA. Compatibility has been achieved with Red Hat Linux 6.0 since then, but PC-TEL appears to be distribution-agnostic. Company engineers said that PC-TEL plans to support the distributions that its customers, or original equipment vendors, request. In fact, when asked, the team indicated that it looks forward to evaluating the possibility of a port of its product to the new Amiga. This new version of the venerable computer system will be based, at least in part, on Linux, and is scheduled to be released later this year. PC-TEL Director of Program Management Terry Huang said that the code for the software modem was "adapted from the implementation for Microsoft, but [we] rewrote about one-third of the code." William Hsu, the company's software manager, characterized the Linux development as "cleaner and easier than for Microsoft." Traditionally, software modems have a bad reputation in the Linux community. In fact, they've earned the nickname "WinModems," because many are "optimized" to work with the Microsoft Windows operating system, and refuse to cooperate with any other OS. Even more irritating, at least in the eyes of the open source community, is the fact that there is usually little or no documentation for such software modems, and so developers who might want to write a Linux-compatible interface to WinModems have no specifications or other documentation on which to base such an effort. This same lack of documentation can also force WinModem owners to upgrade their software modems unnecessarily when they wish to upgrade their operating system -- because new versions of the Microsoft operating system often lack support for older WinModems. Without documentation, users have no way of addressing this compatibility problem on their own. In an interview with LinuxWorld, PC-TEL indicated that, because it is now catering to the more sophisticated crowd of end users in the Linux market, it is evaluating the possibility of releasing more documentation for the Linux-compatible MicroModem on its Web site. In the past, such information has been released to end users on written request -- an approach that still may be used if documentation isn't publicly posted. PC-TEL said that it would like to ensure that end users have the information they need in the event that an OEM, or even PC-TEL itself, were to decide to cut off support for a particular OS or implementation. In that case, the company would release the necessary documentation, so that the end users would not be orphaned. [INLINE] moral: jgn lari drpd standard - news://my.enemy.org/my-linux.bincang http://ku.rindu.net/penguin/ unsubscribe echo "unsubscribe penguin"|mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
